Desert Illusion
by Chaotic Century
Summary: "There's a legend, an Elemia desert legend." Have you ever seen the strange, flickering lights out in the desert at night? This is the tale of the Mirage. Set in the continuity of the "Earthling" trilogy but distinct from those stories; Battle Story/Chaotic Century timeline.
1. Chapter 1 - ZAC 2036

**Author's Note:** This story is set in the continuity of my "Earthling" trilogy, which is to say, an imagined combination of the Battle Story and Chaotic Century timelines. While reading the "Earthling" series and its associated side pieces is recommended and will help you get more out of this one, it is not necessary to do so, as "Desert Illusion" stands quite well on its own.  
I hope you enjoy, and reviews are, as always, deeply appreciated.

 **DEDICATION  
** _For Yuji Kaida, with gratitude_

* * *

 _ **Chapter 1**_

 _Once upon a time, there was a blue planet, hovering lonely in the outer reaches of the Milky Way galaxy. This planet's name was Zi. Across its deserts, plains, forests, and oceans teemed wild mechanical creatures called Zoids, as well as primitive peoples called Zoidians._

 _Zi was quiet._

 _Spread out over several continents, Zoids and Zoidians lived peacefully together, giving according to their abilities, taking according to their needs. The Zoids evolved over time into different types of creatures, with different appearances and characteristics. The Zoidians split up over time into different tribes, living in different places and adopting different customs. But in spite of these differences, all continued to live peacefully together. And Zi was quiet._

 _But then, one day, the searing heat of war came._

 _War consumes all; even the victors are savaged by its horrors._

 _Those who survive are irrevocably changed._

 _Zoids fought other Zoids. Zoidians fought other Zoidians. Zoidians and Zoids worked together to fight other Zoidians and Zoids._

 _Zi was no longer quiet._

 _Her waters flowed red, stained by this savagery. Her lands were littered with fallen people and machines._

 _Amid this carnage, a soldier who had endured unendurable torture at the hands of a frustrated enemy lay dying, cradled in the arms of his faithful comrade. But when it came time for him to enter what lay beyond, he hung back. He could not bear to leave. Haunted by the cruelty he had suffered, driven by the need to protect others from that same fate, he remained tethered to the broken blue planet that had been his home._

 _And who was that soldier, who was unable to pass on, whose tale I shall now tell? To which tribe did he belong? For what cause did he fight?_

 _It does not matter, for none remain who know._

-.-.-.-

 **ZAC 2036**

Pyxis had always been a bit of a strange child. She had been born, as was found out after the fact, on the very same day that the Earth ship _Globally 3_ had crashed down on Zi. Her father could often be heard joking that Pyxis had been one of the Earthling survivors. "It's the only logical explanation for her oddities," he would say, a twinkle in his eye.

Indeed, Pyxis often seemed lost someplace far away. She spent hours gazing out the window of her family's humble cottage on the outskirts of a lonely army base in the southern Elemia desert. As far as her loving but concerned parents could tell, there was nothing to be seen but low, rolling hills of sand all the way to the horizon. What was out there that fascinated their precious, precocious young daughter so?

Her mother and father learned quickly to keep a close eye on Pyxis, for almost as soon as the child could walk, she was darting out the door and into the desert the moment her minder's back was turned. More than once, search parties had been dispatched, as Pyxis had proved to possess an exceptional stamina and determination that were not in the least hindered by her short legs and small lungs, and she would ultimately be located many miles away many hours later, usually happily exploring some crumbling ruin no one else had known was even there.

If there were anything exerting more of a pull on Pyxis than the desert, however, it was the desert at night. The dunes were ashen and mysterious; the sky was delicate and infinite. Three moons hovered closely together, countless stars freckled the silken blackness, and the pale wash of galactic light arcing elegantly overhead whispered promises of planets and places unseen. Pyxis frequently awoke in the night and left her bed for her window seat, where she fell asleep dreaming of ancient tales told by starlight.

For Zi harbored stories; Pyxis knew this instinctively from the very first time she had heard the constant wind blow. The desert breezes bore little hints to her eager ears, whispering fragments of births and deaths, war and struggle, love and loss, and so she listened carefully, very carefully, awaiting the day when Zi would at last share its secrets.

Pyxis' mother was tucking her in one clear, starry evening. "Now, dear," she said, "please be sure to stay in your bed tonight. Your father and I will be going out for a while, and we need to know that you'll be safe here."

"Yes, Mama," Pyxis said.

"You may look out the window if you like, but you mustn't leave your room. Do you understand?"

Pyxis nodded. She had planned to go outside tonight, but she didn't want to unduly worry her mother. She could go tomorrow, instead.

"There's my good girl," her mother said, kissing Pyxis' forehead. "Good night." She got up to leave the room.

"Will you tell me a story, Mama?"

Her mother stopped in the doorway, her silhouette faint in the dim light beyond. "About what, my love?"

"Anything. I love the stories you tell me."

She laughed, perching once more on the edge of the bed. "I think I've told you all of the ones I know."

"No, I'm sure you haven't!" Pyxis insisted. "There must be one you've never told me before." She settled comfortably under her blankets and looked at her mother. Mama, like almost everyone else in their humble little military settlement, didn't have much in the way of material goods, but still, dressed as she was for an evening out, she was lovely and radiant. Pyxis sometimes thought her mother too magical to have come from Zi, not knowing that Mama, in turn, thought the same of her violet-eyed daughter.

"Ah, perhaps you are right." Her mother fingered the pendant she now wore, a stunning piece rarely removed from its jewelry box. It was the only thing in the room, Pyxis felt, able to rival the ethereal beauty of her mother. "Do you know about this stone in my necklace?"

Pyxis shook her head. She had always loved this pendant and its peculiar translucent swirls of dark color. "Please tell me."

"It's made of something called 'sleeping cosmosite.' It's an exceptionally rare and valuable mineral."

"Where did it come from?" asked Pyxis.

"Well, my little wanderer, that is the story I will now tell you. And after I tell you, it is time for sleep. Alright?"

"Yes, Mama."

"Good. Then I'll begin. Once upon a time, there was a lonely asteroid drifting through space."

"What's an asteroid?"

"It's a big rock that circles around, or orbits, our sun, just like Zi and the other planets in our solar system do. This asteroid had drifted through space for so long that he was almost as old as time itself. And imagine floating in outer space for that long, with no friends and no one to talk to."

Pyxis, a very lonely child herself, who was often shunned by the other children for her dreamy oddness, immediately empathized with the asteroid.

"One day, the asteroid decided to look into space and see if he could find anyone to talk to. But there was nothing and no one, for even though you and I see our moons and many stars when we look into the night sky, outer space is actually quite vast, and very empty. And so he looked farther and farther and farther away - farther even than any telescope on Zi would ever be able to see."

"What did he see so far away?"

Her mother stroked Pyxis' hair, the color of twilight's last blush, back from her forehead, and ran her fingers gently through those long locks. Pyxis had screamed and cried so vociferously when it had been trimmed for the first time - "But how will I feel the desert wind in my hair if it's so short, Papa?" she'd sobbed - that they had never tried cutting it again. Nowadays, it fell to the girl's hips. "Beyond all of the stars and planets, the asteroid saw the nursery."

"What is the nursery? What did it look like?"

"It was a beautiful sea of swirling clouds: turquoise, aquamarine, blue, and indigo. It was the place where stars are born."

Pyxis, transfixed, looked to her mother's pendant, seemingly glowing even in the room's faint light, then back to her.

"The asteroid fell in love the moment he saw her, the nursery. He had never seen such beauty anywhere in the infinite heavens. She was radiant beyond imagining, and from the dust of her luminous clouds, she sculpted the stars, sending them out across the universe to become suns just like ours.

"But how could the asteroid, a small, lumpy, gray rock, impossibly far away, be able to go to her? How could he ever be with her? Was he doomed to wander forever through space, only able to see his beloved from afar?

"The asteroid thought of her, only her, and nothing but her. Eons passed and he grew heavy, weighted down with these painful thoughts, and slowly, the gravity of the nearest planet began to pull him in. Closer, closer, closer, and the asteroid did not fight this, even though he knew what happened to asteroids drawn in to a planet's atmosphere."

"What happens?"

"They become meteors and meteorites, my love. Sometimes we see meteors as shooting stars, burning up high in the sky. And other times, they make it through the atmosphere to become meteorites, and fall flaming to the ground."

"Which did the asteroid become?"

"The asteroid was so heavy with the sadness of his unrequited love that he first became a meteor, burning bright in the sky over the planet. And he was so heavy with his pain and loneliness that he did not burn up and become a shooting star, but instead traveled afire through the atmosphere, where he landed, burning hot and melting, in a great desert on that planet."

"What happened then?" Pyxis asked breathlessly.

"The asteroid took one last look into the heavens, to the birthplace of the stars. What he saw there, the nursery's beauty and remoteness, were mirrored in and burned into his molten contours, so that he would now reflect his love forevermore. And so the asteroid, a big, lumpy, gray rock, was now a meteorite, a small stone, imprinted by the cosmos and the mysterious swirling clouds of the one he had lost."

Pyxis' eyes slid again to the pendant hanging below her mother's throat, to the shimmering, mist-like tendrils of color it held: turquoise, aquamarine, blue, indigo.

"The meteorite fell asleep on that new planet, and in his dreams he was able to be, at last, with his beloved." Her mother stroked Pyxis' forehead again, and the little girl blinked, her mind quite awake but her eyelids growing heavy. "And then one day in that desert, a man came along and found the meteorite, and brought it home, and cut and polished it and set it in silver. And when it was ready, he gave it to the one he loved." She smiled at Pyxis. "And that is the end of my tale for tonight."

"Thank you, Mama," Pyxis murmured drowsily, visions of the heavens dancing in her head.

"Of course."

"Halley," came Pyxis' father's voice from the other room. "It's time."

"Coming," she called softly, then turned back to her daughter. "Sleep well, little traveller. See you in the morning."

"Good night, Mama."

Her mother kissed Pyxis' forehead one last time and slipped silently from the room, closing the door behind her.

Rustlings and soft voices were audible for a few minutes from across their little cottage, and then the front door opened, and closed, and the house fell silent.

Pyxis lay quietly in her bed, listening to the constant winds blowing by outside. She thought about the asteroid from the story, and felt sorry for it, that it would never be able to be with its love now that it had fallen down to Zi. But she knew her mother loved the necklace it was now set in, and hoped that this served as some solace to the lonely asteroid. Her mother, after all, was surely more beautiful than even the stars' nursery so many millions of miles away.

Pyxis nudged her covers gently aside and padded over to her window seat, upon which she settled down in her usual comfortable position. The cloudless sky was bright with the sparkling of uncountable stars, and De, Se, and Ae hung in a cluster far to the right of Pyxis' view. She let her eyes wander through the heavens, imagining that the nursery were visible to her on Zi somehow, seeing in her visions the delicate entanglements of dust clouds and cool colors.

Just then, a wink of light far above moved, leaving a long, glowing tail behind as it streaked across the sky and down, it seemed, into the desert. Pyxis blinked, quite unable to believe her eyes, and maybe wouldn't have, were it not for the bright afterimage the object's light had left behind her eyelids. "An asteroid?" she breathed.

No. A meteorite.

-.-.-.-

The desert could be very cold at night, although Pyxis didn't mind. She hustled over the low dunes, her feet, ankles, legs, and lungs strong and accustomed to traversing sand for long periods. Her violet hair streamed behind her like a banner, catching the wind and revealing its movement.

Millions of stars twinkled cheerfully overhead, and the trio of moons followed along on the little girl's nocturnal adventure.

Pyxis thought she had a good idea of where she was going, for her keen eyes had noted carefully where the meteorite appeared to have landed. However, it wasn't until she'd been running for over an hour, the orienting lights of her home base long since lost to dunes and distance, that it first occurred to her that she might have thought wrong.

She stopped at last, panting, and stood atop a low hill as her breath slowly returned to her.

She didn't know where she was. The desert offered precious few landmarks under even the best of circumstances. And now, when she had been so single-mindedly pursuing the fallen meteorite that she had failed to take much note of her passing surroundings, the desert seemed to be the same in every direction she looked.

Except, of course, for the trail of her footprints in the sand, leading away, back from whence she'd come. Pyxis looked at it for a long moment. Unless she tried to navigate by the night sky - a skill which she had explored but was far from mastering - this was probably her only means back home now. And yet, and yet. She looked in the other direction. Somewhere beyond where she stood, she felt sure, a rare sleeping cosmosite stone was waiting for her, one she could keep for her very own, so that it - and maybe she - would never have to feel lonely again.

They would come looking for her in the morning, wouldn't they? She didn't need to go back just yet.

Still...

She looked at the trail of footprints once more. Already the relentless wind was shifting the sand around behind her, covering up her tracks. The sooner she headed back, the more of a trail there would be for her to follow.

Ultimately, however, it was curiosity, and an abiding, unspoken desire to feel a little bit less alone, that drove her recklessly onward, further into a cold, unforgiving, but beautiful landscape that held on so very tightly to its secrets.


	2. Chapter 2 - ZAC 2036

_**Chapter 2**_

 _Barbarism and cruelty rushed over Zi like a contagion. Warriors on both sides of the conflict found themselves swept away in the onslaught of bloodlust that came over them when it came time to enter battle. Zoids that had led peaceful lives, pursuing their solitary ways or traveling with herds or families, could not resist the call to do the murderous work they had evolved, been designed, to do. Zoidians who had been farmers or shepherds or artisans allowed adrenaline and a thirst for harm to crash over them like a wave, and did terrible things they had never imagined were possible for them to do._

 _And not only that, but they enjoyed it._

 _Regret, and the shuddering horror of realization at what crimes one had committed in the heat of battle, would come later. But it had no place now, in this hell of mindless savagery._

 _The Soldier had simply been an anonymous target; nothing about him specifically had impelled his pursuers to pick him off from his comrades for their fiendish ends._

 _He fought them off for as long as he could, but there were too many of them and only one of him._

 _His mount succumbed to its injuries, its cracked Zoid core spilling shining silver innards into the desert's ravaged sand. The others took the Soldier then, venting upon him their fury at all that they themselves had done and borne and lost._

 _I will not tell you of the calculated violence, the very evil, that they unleashed upon that poor man. It is not for your ears to hear._

 _As the Soldier suffered and slipped towards death, he wondered what had become of his Zoid, his comrades, even his friends and family back home. Were they to survive, at least, even if he would not?_

 _A dark loneliness held him in its cold hands. With no other choice, he surrendered to it._

-.-.-.-

 **ZAC 2036**

Pyxis ascended a dune and sat down. She was tired, so very tired, the kind of tired from which not even her boundless curiosity could protect her.

She had been out in the desert for hours. Lying in bed listening to her mother's story felt like it had been ages ago. The moons, having already reached their zenith, were now beginning their descent back down to the horizon.

Though a young and impetuous child, she possessed just enough wisdom to now understand what a grave mistake she had made, seeking out one small rock in this great desert spanning most of an entire continent.

She looked around at the sea of sand surrounding her, rolling dunes stretching limitlessly out into darkness. No landmarks revealed themselves, for there were none. Nothing whatever broke up the visual monotony, in fact, except...

Pyxis straightened up. Was the moonslight playing tricks on her eyes? There were stars, such beautiful stars, hovering at the peak of a dune some ways distant, a dune taller than the one she now sat upon. How had the stars come down from the heavens? And why? She peered curiously at this strange new sight. The lights seemed to be arranged in a particular pattern, as though creating a three-dimensional constellation that sparkled on the ground instead of the sky. A constellation of what? She squinted, but could not discern a form from their arrangement.

Only one thing to do to find out, she knew, and so she stood, brushed sand off of her bottom, and trotted over to the dune, her fears of being lost and stranded in the desert now quite forgotten.

The stars seemed to shift slightly as she approached, but maintained their positions. When she stood at the bottom of the dune, she could not escape the powerful sensation that, just as she was looking up at these lights, they, in turn, were looking down back at her. She ascended the dune carefully and stood facing them. Whatever shape they were supposed to resemble, it was large, far taller than she, and easily the size of a small Zoid.

She gazed at these little stars, admiring how they shone, and wondered what they were doing here on Zi. "What tales have you to tell?" she asked them.

At the sound of her voice, the stars' light flared, lines began to connect each bright point, and flat planes of metal appeared. She stared in amazement as their form was at last revealed to her: a red, white, and gray Zoid, diminutive by the standards of what few Zoids she was familiar with, yet still at least three times her height.

The Zoid was of a species she had never seen before, and it stood before her silently, shimmering at points in the twinkling of its own stars.

"Hello," she said, carefully. And waited.

After a few moments, the creature knelt down in front of her, and its orange canopy glass rose. Pyxis blinked. This strange Zoid had a pilot.

A young man sat at the Zoid's controls, regarding her calmly and without expression. His eyes and hair were dark, his features fine, but his skin was luminous, and so pale it might have even been translucent in the moonslight. It was hard to tell.

"What's your name?" Pyxis asked.

The pilot continued to look at her, seemingly neither friendly nor hostile.

"I do not know," he said, at length. His silvery voice was faint, as if it were coming to her all the way from the distant stars. Pyxis thought she saw a shadow of sorrow pass over his face as he said this, but he was far enough from where she stood that she couldn't be sure.

"My name is Pyxis," she said politely. "I'm six years old." The pilot said nothing. He seemed to be shimmering, wavering, like a distant mirage. "Is this your Zoid?"

"Yes."

"I've never seen one like it before. What is it called?"

The pilot looked down at his control array, as if he needed to be reminded just what, exactly, he was commanding. "This is an Elepantus," he replied.

Pyxis had heard of Elepantuses before, but had not known that there were any still in working condition, let alone common use. Where had this strange pilot gotten a Zoid that old? She did not wish to be rude and comment upon this, however, and so she opted for a safer tack. "It's a very nice Zoid." He gazed at her, not uttering a word, a flat emptiness spread out over his delicate features. Absent any further reaction, she continued, "Have you been together long?"

Again sorrow passed over his face. So she hadn't imagined it. "Yes," he said. His voice was now slightly more sure, slightly less bewildered, than it had been. "We have been partners for a very long time."

"You're friends, then," Pyxis clarified.

"Yes."

She sighed, needing suddenly to sit down on the dune as an indescribable exhaustion broke over her small body. "I don't really have any friends," she told the pilot, her words soft and resigned and nearly lost in the breeze. "I wish I had one like you."

She didn't realize the double meaning her sentence carried. Her chin rested on her knees as she gazed forlornly at the sand between her toes, but the pilot was looking at her, almost as if startled, perhaps now truly seeing her for the first time. Awareness dawned. He blinked.

"You are lonely," he said.

She nodded miserably.

"And you are lost."

She nodded again. Tears welled in her lavender eyes. "I don't know how to get back home. I should have listened to Mama and stayed in bed."

"You wander but are not lost," he said, his silvery voice just slightly fuller now, more real. "Don't be afraid, Pyxis; home is not far away." She looked up; he blinked at her again. His face seemed more fully-formed than it had before, his skin less translucent. Had his ghostly appearance earlier simply been her imagination? "Home is never far away. You need not ever feel alone, for there is always hope."

She thought then of the lonely meteorite she had seen fall from the sky, and wondered how distant its cosmosite remains were. "Can you help me? Get back home?"

"Yes."

Pyxis stood again, brushing sand off of herself. "And can you..." She paused, feeling foolish, but then recklessly pressed on: "Can you be my friend, too?"

She thought he might look startled, but he did not. He seemed, in fact, to have been anticipating her question. He smiled at her, a smile that was warm and gentle yet shaded still with sadness, too. There was much even a remarkably precocious little girl did not understand, and the weight about this young man's heart was one of those things. But what she did understand, when she sensed this pain, was that she did not want him to have to feel that way anymore. She wanted him to smile again, but brightly, fully this time.

"Of course I will be your friend," he said kindly in his ethereal voice, and Pyxis smiled at him. Brightly. Fully.

-.-.-.-

Pyxis yawned widely and then realized with a start that she was back on her window seat. She looked around the room; all was as it should be. Outside, the trio of lunar sisters were low on the horizon. Her father could be heard snoring gently in the next room. Dawn would not be long in coming. How had she gotten all the way back here from wherever she had been out there? There had been walking, she remembered, so much walking, with a ghostly Zoid plodding gently along beside her. Hadn't there?

Or had she not even been out in the desert at all tonight?

Perhaps it had all been a dream.

That was when she noticed that there was something in her hand. She held her palm up to the window and the faint light passing through it. It was a stone, about half the size of her small fist. Even with its rough contours, even in the darkness, she knew what it was: sleeping cosmosite, uncut, unpolished, newly arrived from the far reaches of the Milky Way. Turquoise, aquamarine, blue, and indigo.

A gift, from a friend.

And just like that, she, and the meteorite, were alone no more.


	3. Chapter 3 - ZAC 2044

**_Chapter 3_**

 _Nothing endures forever, not even war._

 _Time passed, conflicts cooled, and Zi fell quiet once more. The blood in her rivers washed away; the legions of fallen were reclaimed by the earth._

 _The spirits of those fallen moved on, but the Soldier remained behind, a spectre, a being unmoored, an unseen remnant of the mortal he had once been. He knew not whether he had chosen to stay in the southern Elemia desert, or was tethered there forevermore, bound to the land of his birth and death._

 _Together with the ghostly essence of his faithful Zoid, who had remained behind with him, he wandered ceaselessly over the dunes each night. Those who needed aid received it. Those in anguish were given succor. He did whatever he could for whomever he found, tirelessly working to ease the pain of these Zoids, these Zoidians, so that no would ever have to suffer again as he and his Zoid had._

 _But time was not kind, and as it passed, and the Soldier remained on Zi instead of traveling on to the reckoning and the beyond as he ought, that which had once made him Zoidian began to slip away._

 _One day, he realized that he could no longer feel. The rough sand of the desert, which had cradled him for his entire life and all times beyond it, was as nothing. The wind caressing his dark locks seemed to have vanished, though his hair still moved in quiet zephyrs. When he recalled his loved ones, themselves long departed by now, there was no sadness at their loss. He could no longer experience happiness nor grief, anger nor joy - not even fear of what these changes could portend._

 _And then came the long forgetting. First it was names, dates, faces, then it was whole phases of his life and that which had mattered most to him._

 _The last thing he was able to recall was the violent means by which he had perished, but eventually that, too, slipped away._

 _And he was truly empty then: a husk, a void, too hollow to even be a ghost._

 _Those who received his help saw nothing but the terrene twinkling stars indicating his presence, felt nothing but an odd peace when he was nearby. He was invisible. To the young man lost in the desert, wandering in a fevered delirium, the Soldier was a wisp of something out of the corner of his eye, and encouraging words before a collapse. To the young woman fighting to protect those she loved but nearly succumbing to despair, the Soldier was a faraway friend, a mirage she could never quite reach, a voice calling her back to the struggle._

 _And so time passed, and he faded into nothingness, fighting on for reasons he could no longer remember._

-.-.-.-

 **ZAC 2044**

Pyxis' parents had thought that the remoteness of the Helic army base that was their home, far to the south in Europa, many miles from any other settlement of any appreciable size, would have bought them at least some protection from the ongoing conflict between the Republic and the Zenebas Empire.

They were wrong.

War is waged in climactic battles, enemies striking into the beating hearts of their foes' grand capitals.

It is also waged on the periphery, when small and strategically unimportant settlements are ravaged in surprise attacks. No part of the larger plan is served by such attacks, except this: the enemy is unable to anticipate, believes that there is nowhere safe left to turn, and is cripplingly demoralized.

The Empire, having suffered horrific defeats at the feet of the towering Helic Ultrasaurus forces, was newly energized by the successes, mounting one atop the next, of its freshly deployed Death Saurer battalions. The Empire would not forget the bitterness of losses that had been inflicted upon it, and now, with armies of this fearsome Zoid at their disposal, was the time for revenge.

Now was the time for total war.

-.-.-.-

The blare of the raid alarm sliced through the quiet desert darkness like a blade.

"Enemy approaching! Enemy approaching! Abandon Solas Base! This is not a drill! All military and civilians are under orders to evacuate!"

The sickening thud of ordnance slamming into dunes less than half a mile away from the base was proof enough that an attack was incoming. Chaos reigned in the streets as residents poured out of houses, bearing hastily-filled boxes or clutching the small hands of sobbing children, and sought escape however they could: Zoids, cars, even jumping onto the backs of passing army trucks.

The shelling was getting closer still.

"Pyxis! Where is my daughter? Help! Have you seen Pyxis?" Pyxis' mother was running down the street, fighting through the crowds surging in the opposite direction, screaming her daughter's name. She sighted a neighbor, grasping his arm desperately. "Aidan! Please, do you know where Pyxis is? Have you seen her?"

"I'm sorry, I haven't, but come on! We need to evacuate! She's probably already left with another convoy."

"No, you don't understand, she's probably in the desert, maybe in the path of those -"

"Halley, you need to leave now. We all need to leave. Why don't you come with -"

His words were cut off by a shell landing not half a block away; the bombardment had reached the base at last. Those nearer to the blast screamed as debris flew into the street from the explosion.

"Come _on_!" But Pyxis' mother would not budge, and so Aidan shook his head and turned to flee with the others streaming by.

She ran down the street, still calling Pyxis' name, her eyes watering from the heat of the fire that had already sprung up in the shelled building and was in danger of spreading to nearby structures. More shells were falling in the base proper now, making the ground quake dizzyingly beneath her feet. Plumes of smoke reached like dark fingers all around her into the night sky.

A personnel transport truck pulled up alongside. She looked up. Major Connors was reaching his hand down to her from the back, in which numerous other soldiers were already packed. "Halley," he said simply. "It's time to leave. Your husband is already on another truck."

"But - but Pyxis," she panted. But she already knew, deep down, that Pyxis was not on the base, would not be found here no matter how long she looked.

"We need to leave, Halley."

She swiped the back of her hand across her eyes, then looked down at it. It was streaked with dust, sweat, and tears. She swallowed and finally nodded. There was nothing else to be done here. Pyxis would have to fend for herself.

Halley took Major Connors' hand and allowed herself to be lifted into the truck. Its open rear windows framed the last glimpse she would ever have of the base that had been her home for the last seventeen years: smoking, burning, rapidly being reduced to ruins.

-.-.-.-

Pyxis sat atop the tallest dune she could find, her hoverboard beside her. She had the sneaking feeling she had been here before, but without GPS nor any sort of landmark in this section of the desert, it was hard to say. No matter; this was the perfect spot. She was feeling sad, and hurt, the latest rounds of cruel words from her peers like barbs needling at her heart. Here in the darkened desert, at least, she was safe from their strange looks and harsh laughter, and she could be what she most often wished to be: protected and alone.

Well, perhaps that last part wasn't entirely true. Every time she slipped from her bed and out into the rolling hills of sand just beyond her home, a tiny flame of hope flickered inside her, that tonight would be the night she would see him again.

She hadn't encountered the pilot, nor his Elepantus, in some time, though there had been a handful of moments she had spotted strange, flickering lights far out in the desert when sitting at her window at night. But in spite of this, she still felt a connection to the ethereal young man who seemed to come and go like a ghost. In each of the previous times she had had the privilege of his company, the tiniest bit of the cloak of mystery that shrouded him had been lifted. He still couldn't remember much of anything, but tantalizing hints of his past had come to him in their time together, spurred, it seemed, by her very presence.

But even leaving aside all of the riddles of his past, over the years he had revealed himself to be gentle, caring, and kind. His distant demeanor could not overcome a genuine affection for her.

She held a small stone in her hand, its corners smoothed from years of stroking by anxious fingers. It was just as mysterious and beautiful now as it had been when it had been given to her. There always seemed to be some strange warmth emanating from it, a warmth that made Pyxis remember what it had felt like to have the pilot beside her.

She shifted her knee-length lavender hair out from under her, allowing the zephyrs to do what they would with it. Like eager children, they immediately caught her locks and began to play. Did they have stories to tell her tonight? She listened carefully, for whispers borne in the breeze from people and places distant. She closed her eyes and sighed happily, tilting her face up to the pearly light of the three moons and numberless stars. It was hard not to feel better already out here, in this familiar open landscape, the only place where she ever truly felt at home.

A sudden and deep feeling of serenity settled over her just then. Was it the desert, working its usual magic? Or perhaps -

She opened her eyes. There were stars hovering on either side of her, stars plucked from the infinite heavens and here now, here just for her, here to bring her the one person she had been longing for. She smiled and stood. It had been at least a couple of years since she'd last seen her friend, and the more her daily life proved itself difficult, inferior, painful, the more she had ached to be out here, free with him in their dream world once again.

The wind picked up for just a moment, whistling, as the stars arranged themselves and were connected by contours and segments and planes, and then suddenly a Zoid was standing before her.

"You're here," she said, only a split second before realizing that this was not her friend's Elepantus. She took a step back and stared up at the creature, its sheet metal shimmering like liquid silver in the moonslight. This Zoid was red, white, and gray as the Elepantus had been, but far larger. Its two substantial front legs stood like massive tree trunks before her. She studied its head, which was pivoting downwards to get a better look at her. Was it -

"A Shield Liger?" A relatively newly-developed species, and the pride of the Helic Republic, the Shield Liger was a Zoid Pyxis had not had the opportunity to see in person save for a handful of times. Solas Base was far too remote for that. "Who are you?" she asked.

The Liger crouched low before her as its orange canopy glass raised. Seated calmly at its controls was her friend.

"It - it's you!" she gasped.

He exited the cockpit in one graceful motion and walked over to her. "Yes," was all he said.

"Where is your Elepantus?"

He smiled at her, a touch sadly. "Gone. It wished to return to its rest. Shortly thereafter I found this Shield Liger's remains in the aftermath of a battle that I was not able to prevent. It was not yet ready to move on, and so...it agreed to come with me for a time."

The Liger snarled quietly behind him in agreement. Pyxis blinked at it. It had the same ghostly aspect as the Elepantus had had and indeed her friend still did, blurring in and out of focus, flickering slightly if one peered too closely, its opacity rippling like a wave on still water.

"Have you been well, Pyxis?" the pilot asked her now.

She turned to him and mustered a smile. "Well enough."

"Then...what brings you out into the desert tonight?"

"Is it that obvious?" He said nothing. "Well, I suppose I just wanted some time to be away from all of the people on my base. I hate...I hate how much their words hurt me. I hate having to feel anything at all when so much of it is sorrow." She stole a glance over at him. "And - I was hoping I'd run into you. I haven't seen you in a long time."

"Shall we sit?" the pilot asked, nodding to a spot on the ground by the Liger's left paw. They settled into the sand, and he continued, "Please accept my apologies for having been absent. The world...is not well, it would seem, and I try my hardest to help. But I can't do everything."

Pyxis was dimly aware, from past meetings, that the pilot devoted what was apparently all of his energy and time to trying to right wrongs and aid those who were suffering. She considered his words now, but as with nearly everything else he said, it simply led to more questions. "What are you trying to do out here? You're only one person. Do you really think you can change...everything?" She swept her hand out in front of them, the simple gesture encompassing miles upon miles of sand. "Why do you do all this?"

He was quiet for so long that she feared she might have caused some insult, and so she looked over at him. He was staring at his hands in his lap, his handsome face luminous yet clouded with pain.

"I'm sorry," she said, nervous that she had overstepped yet not knowing precisely how.

He shook his head. "No, don't be. I ask myself those questions too, because...because I don't really have an answer."

"You still can't remember?" she asked, crestfallen. She had hoped - though based on what logic, she didn't know - that in their long time apart he had perhaps been able to recall something of his past.

"No. But sometimes, I feel things."

"'Feel things'? What do you mean?"

He paused a moment, searching for the right words. "It's seemed to me, in the last couple of years, that I'm not as...empty as I was before. Sometimes, when I witness some terrible injustice, I feel - I feel angry, I think. Or other times, perhaps a bit melancholy, when the moons look a certain way." He glanced over at her shyly. "And now, when I'm here with you..."

Pyxis' breath caught in her throat. She met his eyes; they were so dark that the whites were translucent gray and the irises may as well have been black. "What?" she asked.

"I think that maybe this is what happiness feels like." He reached one shimmering hand out to take hers, but then stopped. They had never touched each other before. "May I...?" he asked tentatively.

She suddenly wanted nothing more in this moment than some connection with someone, someone who was safe and would not hurt her, and so in wordless reply she took his hand in her own.

It was cool and soft and like holding moonslight. She looked down at their hands and saw, to her surprise, how solid and real his flesh nearest her hand appeared. Looking up at him again, she saw he was staring reverently at her. "It's you," he said, in realization. "You're the reason I'm beginning to feel again."

"Me? But how could that be? We haven't seen each other in years."

"Maybe because...because you care about me, don't you? I'm not sure why or how, but somehow, I think, you anchor me here."

"I - I do?" Pyxis wasn't sure if she had ever impacted anyone's existence, save her parents', to any real degree. To know that she had helped her only friend, the way he had already helped her, gave her a warm feeling in the center of her chest, a warmth like that which lurked inside her sleeping cosmosite.

He was still holding her hand, though his eyes were closed, as if he were listening for something. "My Elepantus," he murmured, almost to himself.

"What about it?" she asked curiously, confused by this abrupt turn in the conversation.

His lips wore a dreamy smile. "I remember being assigned my Elepantus. When I enlisted in the army. I remember when we first met."

"You remembered something?" Pyxis gasped. This was all - because of her? She grinned, the joy inside nearly overflowing. "What do you remember? Tell me."

"He was my first Zoid. I was his first pilot. I remember that it got a little bit interesting there, in the beginning! It was a very cloudy day. Rain threatening. I don't think he knew what to make of me. The very first time I climbed into his cockpit, he used his emergency eject function to boot me right back out! I landed in a mud puddle and spent hours that night scrubbing my uniform clean." The pilot chuckled to himself, lost in the pleasure of this amusing reverie.

His little story had all come out so suddenly, as if the memory were something near at hand, not something he'd had to struggle for like he had other recollections in the past, and they both realized this momentous change at the same time as their eyes met.

"I'm sorry that others have hurt you," he said quietly, his faint words gamboling about with the breeze like so many feathers. They were still holding hands. "But it is such a gift, you know...to be able to remember, to be able to feel, to be able to live. You do not know how precious these gifts are until they're gone."

Pyxis had never thought of it that way before, but he was right. She had witnessed the infinite emptiness in him for as long as she'd known him, and as she witnessed now the change that a return of even a handful of emotions and memories had wrought, she understood how wide that chasm had been for him.

She, herself, felt a vibrance surging inside her that she could scarce remember experiencing before. Perhaps there had been a chasm within her, too.

The pilot was still looking at her, regarding her not expressionlessly, but with careful, mindful attention, as if she were something he could not bear to lose sight of. His pale, shimmering face was very close to hers.

There was a great wave of emotions crashing over her at that moment: gratitude, curiosity, wonder, sympathy, affection. He had been her friend since childhood. His presence had always been a place of safety, of calm, of happiness.

"I want you to be able to remember, to be able to feel," she whispered to him. "To be able to live." And she leaned forward, closing the gap of mere inches that separated them, and brought her mouth to his.

His lips were smooth and warm and very much as real as his hand had been, and as the two lonely souls kissed, her mind burst with fireworks of images and emotion.

A little girl with a stuffed animal in her hands. Protectiveness.

A mother's embrace. Love.

A birthday cake. Delicious.

A small creek on a blindingly sunny afternoon. Heat.

A pile of textbooks beside a school uniform. Worry.

A military barracks. Determination.

The control panel of a Zoid. Loyalty.

A battlefield. Horror.

Dark, contorted faces leering over her in the moonslight.

Pain.

Fear.

His Elepantus' body motionless in the sand some distance away.

PAIN.

Sorrow.

PAIN _._

 _Sorrow._

 **PAIN.**

 _ **So**_

 _ **much**_

 _ **PAIN.**_

No bottom

no horizon

no end,

it would go on

for all space and time:

 _ **PAIN.**_

A young woman's sobbing face above her.

Then sudden and total darkness.

Pyxis jerked back from their kiss with a cry. Her skin still burned, her joints still throbbed, her bones still ached, her heart still grieved from just the mere fleeting _memory_ of that suffering. "How -" she gasped.

Tears were pouring down the pilot's face. He was really here now; sharply in focus, solid, no more wavering, no more shimmering. The misery writ across his features was so stark that it could not have belonged to a mirage.

"I remember," he murmured, his voice scarcely audible over the humming wind. "I remember everything."

Pyxis could not comprehend the series of visions she had just witnessed. It had all been a normal Europan life until the end...that end...

"That was you," she said, her voice breaking. She was weeping, too, and hadn't even realized. "They did all those horrible things...to you."

He nodded.

"Who? Why...? You're not even...alive...are you...?" On some level, Pyxis had known this all along. But to have it confirmed in such a way was nightmarishly jarring.

"I do not know what I am," he said softly. Moonslight caught on the silver trails of tears down his cheeks. "But whether I am alive, or - or something else, I am grateful to have my memories back." He took both of her hands. "Thank you."

Pyxis smiled at him through her own tears, struggling still to grasp the horrors of his past. Never mind his body, but how had his very essence somehow managed to survive? How had he remained or become a kind and compassionate being after enduring the darkest, cruellest deeds of which Zoidians were capable?

The Liger stirred behind them just then, emitting a low warning growl. The pilot turned and looked up at his mount, then stood, staring far off into the desert ahead.

"What is it?" Pyxis asked, standing too.

"Something is coming," the pilot said, brushing his tears away impatiently. He climbed into the Zoid's cockpit and studied the map and status readouts.

" _What's_ coming?"

His head suddenly shot up in alarm to stare across the desert again. "Get in."

"What? Why?"

"Enemy Zoid squadron approaching Solas Base. I have to go try to stop them, and I'm not going to leave you alone out here."

Pyxis shook her head, furiously trying to absorb what he had just told her. "Solas?" she asked in bewilderment. "But that's my -" And then his words fully struck her. "Solas is under attack?!"

"Get in!" he repeated, loudly. It was an order. Pyxis heaved her hoverboard into the cockpit and then scrabbled hastily in after it, which was not easy even with the Liger's chin in the sand. She flopped awkwardly into the passenger seat aft of the pilot's.

She had only just managed to buckle herself in before the Liger had gotten to its feet. "I hope we're in time," the pilot muttered. "Come on, Liger, let's move!" The massive feline crouched just slightly, then dove forward, transitioning immediately into a dead sprint. Pyxis could do nothing but hang on, whispering to the stars, the moons, anyone who would listen, to please, please, _please_ protect her home.


	4. Chapter 4 - ZAC 2044

_**Chapter 4**_

 _But the Soldier was one of the lucky ones. The Soldier managed to forge a connection with a Zoidian who still lived. She, and she alone, could see him: his pale, young face; his dark, sad eyes. He did not know why he was visible to this strange and beautiful girl, but she was a welcome pinprick of light in a flat blackness that, for him, had existed across all space and time._

 _Perhaps it was because she was just as lonely as he himself was._

 _Perhaps it was because the yearning in her heart had called him forth to return from the in-between._

 _Or perhaps it was because only those touched by the desert's magic can learn all the secrets it guards; she was a creature of the barren dunes, shaped by their sands and kissed into life by their stars, a being apart from all others._

 _The Soldier would never live again, and yet, in some small way, he was indeed still alive, tethered willingly to his homeland by the love of a girl with hair the color of twilight._

 _It was because of her that he was able to connect once more with his Zoidian side after an eternity as a forgotten spectre. It was because of her that he eventually recalled the violent way he had transitioned out of her world and into his own nowhere of sorrowed emptiness._

 _When the emotions and memories returned, they returned in a great and terrible wave. But at last, at last, the Soldier understood again why he remained._

-.-.-.-

 **ZAC 2044**

Pyxis had had scant few opportunities to ride in a Zoid before, and certainly never like this. The night desert, site of so many dreams and tears and breeze-lulled hours, flew by in a blur, all sand and shifting shadow, utterly familiar yet completely alien at this great height and velocity.

With the ceasing of her physical contact with him, the pilot was shimmering and rippling pale again, just like his mount. In fact, if Pyxis squinted her eyes and tilted her head just so, she fancied she could even see the dunes passing by through the Liger's belly beneath her feet, though surely this could not be so.

The thunder of cannon fire preceded their first sighting of Solas Base, but it soon came into view under towering columns of black smoke losing their upper reaches into the heavens. Pyxis cried out, craning forward to see what had become of the only home she'd ever known.

As they came closer, the full extent of the destruction about to engulf the base became clear. A contingent of Lidiers encircling something enormous could be seen trotting along alertly, firing forward every few seconds, their silver and red sheet metal glowing in the reflected light of their guns' bright beams.

Pyxis' eyes settled upon the vast creature being escorted by the Lidiers, and traveled upwards to take in its great stature. "No," she breathed, aghast. "Not here."

"Go, Liger!" the pilot commanded, urging the feline faster. "We're almost out of time!" It snarled in response, calling upon all of the energy it possessed.

"But what - how -" Pyxis could not believe what was happening. "Don't you see what we're up against?! How can you fight with only one Zoid?" Nothing at the base really mattered, in the end, as long as all of the residents had managed to escape in time. She squeezed her eyes shut against this unfolding nightmare, and clutched her sleeping cosmosite in her palm. If only she hadn't left the base tonight, she could have helped with the evacuations...

Yet still, the Liger sprinted towards Solas, towards certain doom for all three of them. What was the point? Anyone who remained at the base, with the enemy force nearly upon its borders, had no hope of rescue. "What are you doing?" she cried. "Just run away! Let it fall!"

"No. We fight," the pilot said simply, yet in a tone that brooked no argument.

"How? How do we fight, when it's just us against all of them? Against - against a Death Saurer?" Her voice trembled to even speak those two cursed words aloud.

"We turn their evil against them," the pilot replied cryptically. They would be facing the leading Lidiers in just a few more seconds.

"Can they...can they see us?" Pyxis whispered, nearly sick with terror.

She could hear the smile on the pilot's lips when he answered her: "No."

With a ground-shaking roar, the Shield Liger charged into position, defiantly planting its mighty forelegs into the sand just beyond Solas' northern entrance, near the barracks. Confused cries and shouts were heard over the communications channel.

"Look! Do you see those lights? What are they?"

"Did you hear that roar? That wasn't a friendly!"

"Leave now or be destroyed!" the pilot bellowed, his voice so imposing, so visceral, so seemingly having sprung from all directions at once, that even Pyxis shrank back at the sound.

The Lidiers up front paused, unsure what to do against this invisible threat, and the Death Saurer's pilot only scarcely halted the clumsy beast in time before its massive foot crushed one of the escort. For all anyone could see, a hovering assemblage of stars had suddenly appeared between them and their objective, and no one had any idea what to make of this strange and ominous portent.

"It's because of you that the forgetting and the darkness no longer control me," the pilot said now, softly and only for Pyxis' ears to hear. "Because of you, I'm free to choose my own path. And I choose to stay here with my Liger, to do what good I can, to use my former tormentors to try to undo what can never be undone." He turned around in his seat to look at her. His eyes and lips and the skin of his cheeks were shimmering like pearl. "I can never thank you enough for your friendship."

Pyxis blinked her tears away and swallowed, nodding.

The pilot turned to face forward once more, looked up at the night sky through his mount's glass canopy, and murmured what sounded like an incantation. "Stars fall from high to down below." Pyxis looked up through the canopy, too, and gasped. "To the darkest reaches go."

The moons had vanished, and the stars were falling downward, leaking down the sides of the great dome of the sky like drops of water slinking down the curves of an overturned bowl. Impenetrable blackness followed as if it were a curtain being drawn by the stars as they fell down to Zi, and as the countless celestial bodies disappeared into the horizon, the darkness became complete.

Cries of fear and confusion from the enemy Zoids followed, for there seemed to be no light left in the world, save for the few fires burning in Solas Base, the angry glowing red slits of the Death Saurer's eyes, and the Liger's dancing constellation.

"Sorcery!"

"What evil magic is this?"

"I can't see! My instrument panels have all gone dark!"

"Mine too!"

"Awaiting orders, Captain! We can't fight like this!"

"Attack! Attack, I say! Destroy that - whatever that thing is! That is an order!"

"Let us now bring back the light," the pilot said quietly, his voice an oasis of calm amid the furor ahead. "Deploying energy shield."

The Liger stiffened its stance as the mane fins on its chin and the crown of its head opened up. Simultaneously, numberless beams of light came streaking in from every point of the horizon, shining forward in a searing blaze of light with the shield as it deployed.

Pyxis blinked against the sudden brightness, though judging from the agonized cries of the enemy pilots, the light perceived from their vantage point must have been blinding.

Any shots that had been fired a moment prior exploded harmlessly against the radiant shield, and none further came, for the Death Saurer and its escorts were retreating. The Zenebas combatants knew not what force they had come up against, but this little desert outpost was not worth the casualties promised by the strange power serving as its guardian.

Pyxis gazed in mute awe at the shield and the wondrous, swirling clouds of vivid colors its dome-shaped arrangement of panels contained: turquoise, aquamarine, blue, indigo. She had never beheld such a mesmerizing embrace of movement and hue in all her life. To bear witness to the iridescence of this radiant light was to touch the cosmos, approach infinity. Her stone pulsed with life in her palm.

The enemy Zoids were gone, and all was still.

"Stars born from beauty, fly back up high," the pilot whispered. "Return your light to all the sky."

The Liger's shield flickered and vanished, and the concentration of light that had been at its center broke into countless pieces, each soaring upwards to its own place in the heavens again. Familiar astral formations reappeared in the flat black overhead, twinkling pleasantly as if they had never left.

The wind roamed softly over the dunes and the desert was quiet beneath the light of the stars. Pyxis realized she had been holding her breath. "What...just happened?" she asked, dazed.

The pilot turned in his seat to smile at her. "As long as even the tiniest flicker of light exists, the darkness is never total, and so you must never give up hope." He gestured to the vast starfield above them both. Pyxis could imagine the swirling colors of the shield, of her cosmosite, pirouetting through the constellations. "And we have far more than just one."

-.-.-.-

With the Liger's help, the fires were all put out. Pyxis stood wordlessly in the middle of the main north-south-running street, a street that was normally full of people, trucks, carts full of supplies, and even some small Zoids. Now, though, the wind whistled lonely down empty alleys and through open doorways. Solas Base had endured some heavy damage, to be sure, but it was the sheer emptiness of a place formerly teeming with activity that most broke her.

It had been easy to take all of the busyness here for granted, she realized as she pushed a stray lock of violet hair out of her eyes, when all she had wanted was an escape. But now, but now...the very lifelessness of this place felt as if it had torn a hole open in her heart. She would have to leave here, too.

"Pyxis."

She turned; the pilot stood in the center of the street a short distance away. Night was passing and the three lunar sisters, now dipping towards the horizon, were visible through his wavering, ethereal body.

"I'm sorry we could not get here in time to save your home."

She shook her head, already rejecting this apology. "None of this was your fault. Or mine, although I'm probably going to need awhile before I actually believe that."

"Where will you go now?"

"I'm pretty sure I know where everyone was headed. There's a large base about half a day's drive from here. They would have room enough to take in all us refugees." Her eyes roamed over the shelled buildings, the collapsed roofs, the broken glass, the smoking remnants from where fires had burned before being stomped out. "I had no idea when I left my bedroom last night that that was the last time I would ever see Solas whole." She shook her head again, frustrated. "I was always so keen to get back out into the desert that I never stopped to think about what I was leaving behind."

The pilot stepped closer to her. "I couldn't have driven them all away without you, you know."

She laughed darkly. "I'm sure I was quite helpful, quivering there in the backseat."

He ignored this. "All the world is filled with light and darkness. They exist together, symbiotically. Until you came along, I was only ever able to see one side. The way I died..." His voice trembled slightly and he paused, gathering himself. "That eternal darkness marked me. It would have marked me forever, perhaps, if you hadn't found me out there in the desert all those years ago. You reintroduced the light. It was born from you." Pyxis looked at him. "Light and shadow are both a part of me now, and I can use them, as I did tonight, to try to prevent what happened to me from happening to anyone else ever again."

Pyxis studied his handsome, shimmering face, and wondered if he would ever be able to let go of what had been done to him. It was almost unbearably sad to think of what he had gone through and how much it seemed to haunt him still. He perhaps was not alive in the strictest sense of the term, but he experienced pain and grief just like any living Zoidian could.

Stirred by the compassion she felt, she moved towards him as he simultaneously held his arms out, and she allowed herself to be enfolded into his embrace.

"Thank you for helping me remember who I am," he said softly into her hair.

Pyxis blinked. The portion of skin on his arm that was visible to her at that moment was solid, flesh-colored, opaque. She stepped back and searched his suddenly sparkling hazel eyes. "Then...who are you?" she asked.

He gave her a melancholy smile. "I don't know." Already, his features were blurring, graying, fading again from her pulling away. "I am everyone who has ever suffered." He stood before her, the expression on his face wistful, nothing more than a beautiful and shimmering mirage. "And I am no one. A lonely asteroid."


	5. Chapter 5 - ZAC 2101

_**Chapter 5**_

 **ZAC 2101**

Sand and bits of moldy straw coated the bottom of the truck's cargo bed. The vehicle had not been pressed into action in some time, and so it grumbled loudly now, billowing exhaust in protest, as it crested each dune's peak or descended into each shaded trough.

It was ironic how peaceful and beautiful the desert was, given what was happening only a few miles behind them. The night was cloudless and the heavens radiant; the constellations were making their slow progress across the sky and would be positioned very differently, she knew, before the truck had completed its journey to the evacuation shelter.

She leaned her head against the metal and canvas frame of the cargo bed's covering. New Helic City was a glimmering beacon of light in the fading distance; the tires' trail in the sand left her a path to follow to go right back home.

But these were entreaties she had to ignore. New Helic City had fallen to the mysterious enemy who had been plaguing Zi for some time, and by now it was difficult to even justify the evacuation. Surely, once the fabled Death Stinger had leveled the capital, it would seek out the places that harbored the city's refugees to destroy those, too. How could there possibly be any hope left?

The smooth stone in the old woman's palm flared with heat suddenly, at the same time that one of the other miserable refugees crammed into the pickup bed with her cried out. "Look! Look! Is it really him?"

All scrambled over to the small gaps in the canvas, or the back of the truck where she sat, to see for themselves. A distant but mighty roar shook the ground, nearly drowning out the old engine's clatter. "It is! It's him!"

She ducked around the arm of an overexcited child who had suddenly appeared before her and squinted her eyes to see, too. Yes - yes, there it was! A brilliant blue Blade Liger, charging fearlessly and defiantly towards New Helic City to do battle: Van Flyheight. The hero of the Republic - no, the hero of Zi!

Following close at the Blade Liger's heels was a shimmering constellation of stars that seemed to have fallen from the sky. The woman watched the stars, very closely, and for a moment, just for a moment, she saw a flash of ghostly white and red, sleek curves and shining sabres: a second Blade Liger. A mirage.

"As long as even the tiniest flicker of light exists, the darkness is never total," he'd said.

There was far more than one tiny flicker of light out there.

For the first time in what felt like ages, she smiled.

-.-.-.-

 _Time passed and the Soldier carried on with the work he had stayed behind to do. Faithful Zoids remained with him, aiding him in his quest until they were ready to move on, and so he thanked them and bade them farewell and sought out new partners who, for their own reasons, needed to abide on Zi for a bit longer._

 _He and the Zoidian girl remained friends for the rest of her natural life. The bond they shared could cure loneliness even when years had passed between meetings. He was the one who had given her hope; she was the one who had brought him back to life._

 _And when she peacefully passed on, with her loving daughter and young granddaughter at her side, she remained behind in the in-between long enough to see him one final time._

 _They stood together at the top of the hill, in the shade of the great tree. A gentle breeze caressed its leaves, and the cerulean sky seemed to go on forever. He did not often come here; it was a place for which he was not yet ready. But he needed to say goodbye._

" _Won't you stay on Zi with me?" the Soldier implored. It was because of her that he knew how much he had already lost. He couldn't bear to lose her, too._

 _She regarded his youthful face, a face that had never aged, with a sad smile. "Zi is no longer my place," she said to him, touching his cheek. "I do not belong there, as you do."_

" _Will I ever see you again?" He placed his hand over hers, cradling her silver fingers against his skin._

" _Yes. Someday, you will. You'll join me, your Elepantus, your Shield Liger, and all those others you lost who moved on long ago. This is not a farewell, but a temporary parting."_

 _Because of her, the Soldier could feel grief, and he grieved that the journey she now had to undertake was one for which he could not yet join her._

" _Thank you for the hope you've given me, and all the people of Zi," she said._

" _Thank you for my darkness, my light, and my life," he replied softly, interlacing their fingers at his cheek._

 _He kissed her forehead and then let her go. She distilled into a flicker of light, faded away into the long darkness of the star-speckled sky beyond the blue and was gone, but the warmth of her final smile marked his heart and was held and reflected by it forevermore, just as the beauty of the stars' nursery is ever imprinted upon the lonely asteroid who loved her._

 _Even to this day, the Soldier still wanders our great desert. If you look very carefully out your window as the moons rise and the twilight ends, perhaps one night you will see a collection of terrestrial stars flying across the desert, bearing help, and hope, with them._

 _And that, my little wanderer, is the story of the Mirage._

 _Now hush, and close your bright eyes, for it is time to rest. May your sleep be filled with joy and light and all the beauty of the infinite heavens; may your dreams be painted turquoise, aquamarine, blue, indigo._

 _Good night, treasured girl. Good night._

-.-.-.-

* * *

 **Author's Note:** This story was conceived entirely from the artwork of Yuji Kaida, whom we can credit for the jaw-droppingly beautiful box art for the non-HMM Blade Liger Mirage model kit. If you're not familiar with this image, it is absolutely worth seeking out online. Ever since I first laid eyes on this piece back in 2003, I have been entranced by its mysterious, ethereal qualities. The Liger pictured, awash in moonlight, is like a phantom. It got me wondering: is it a ghost? Where is it going, and why? Where did it come from and what is its story?

It took me thirteen years to acquire the model in question, and in fact, I now have two. One sits atop my bookshelf and the other on my desk at work: perfect places for me to contemplate the dreamy, surreal box art of my favorite Liger.

The website contains an extended quote from Kaida-san, from which I will excerpt the following: "[My] daydreams don't have any actual purpose. However, if these imaginings are considered to be the privilege of humans, then perhaps it is these pointless fantasies that make us human. ... If you are able to find fun in using your imagination, I will be very happy."

Thank you for sharing your imaginings with the world of Zoids, Kaida-san, and for the way your marvelous imagination has, in turn, stirred mine.


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